1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a software control system for distribution management of media assets and more particularly to an automated system for management of media news and entertainment assets.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital assets include a variety of different types of content. The following are examples of the types of assets within the scope of multimedia assets.
Video files--either raw or compressed PA1 Audio files--either raw or compressed PA1 Font files--Digitally coded typesets for television receiver display PA1 Configuration files--For operations or Applications PA1 Image files--Compressed or TIFF, RGB, etc. digital pictures PA1 Applications--downloadable computer programs PA1 Point-to-Point Multipath--A single data warehouse location can be the distribution point for several other locations. For example, a location in Orlando, Fla. may simultaneously stream assets to locations in New York, Denver, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Network methods used for distribution may vary and include existing technologies; however, the automated distribution and management of this distribution is the subject of this patent application. There are several areas that can drive automated asset distribution:
Currently almost all commercial entertainment related products such as movies, news videos, audio news, and music, etc. are distributed to the public via hard copy, cable and the air waves in a one way fashion. That is, there is no way of providing end user input to the system or to the provider, and the provider can only monitor assets purchased or used after the sale or access has taken place. In addition, distribution of entertainment information today is serial and mostly analog. In addition, most cable and/or satellite transmission and usage is and has been real time. The information is used, i.e., heard or displayed, as it is received.
One recent development that is receiving increased attention is interactive television (ITV). ITV is currently very basic. It is, for the most part, still serial and real time. For example, most systems allows a cable subscriber to transmit a request via cable for access to a previously scheduled cable program. There are only limited capabilities, however, for the end user to select, view and/or hear, at his or her option, a particular asset at any given time as desired by the end user. Examples of interactive cable systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,361,091 and 5,412,720.
There presently are only very limited systems for managing the transmission of such entertainment information, called asset management systems. The concept of asset management requires a basic knowledge of how such an asset is created and distributed. Take a movie as one example. The movie is created on film or videotape on a set or on location. The raw footage is then dubbed and edited at a studio on film or tape. The movie is then finalized at a production facility where trailers, audio and video shorts or out-takes are separately generated, and promotional materials are designed and produced. The movie audio and video tape is then duplicated for distribution.
As presently envisioned by the entertainment distribution industry, for ITV, the asset "atoms" e.g., a movie video and audio are digitized and packaged into digital distribution files. The movie file is then preferably compressed, for example, using MPEG-2 compression. The asset, now a compressed file, is then stored on an archival storage device such as digital tape or a hard disk drive. The asset can then be copied and transferred to one or more servers at distribution hubs or nodes of a cable network for further storage, copying and use by other servers or use by end users who access the asset through the server via a transmission system such as a cable as a subscriber to the cable transmission service.
A supplier of entertainment assets such as video files and audio files, must be able to distribute these assets to final distribution points efficiently so that the end users can access them as desired. This means that the asset management system must be able to distribute the asset over multiple paths to multiple locations in a short period of time. At present, video on demand (VOD) is not widely available (or, it is not really video on demand). There are a number of constraining factors, such as the transfer time to place the asset where it can be accessed by the end user, the transfer rate at which the asset can be transmitted, and the number of simultaneous users on the system, etc. A major limitation of current distribution systems, for example, is that the number of simultaneous transmissions via cable is constrained by the available bandwidth of the cable system. Even if the provider can provide sufficient number of copies, there may not be enough bandwidth available to the destination to timely transmit the number of files required at a given time. The end user then becomes dissatisfied, having to wait for receipt of his movie. Therefore there is a need for a system which will automatically optimize such transmission variables so that the end user gains access whenever desired.
Another limitation which must be considered is the availability of asset storage space at any given location. Where do you place this information or asset so you're assured of having the highest probability of not getting blocked, i.e. not having a user get blocked from access because there are too may other people accessing that information. Asset storage distribution also has its own limitation which must be considered. That is, each hard disk drive or other storage device such as tape or RAM is connected to the outside world by some interface device such as a SCSI interface. This SCSI interface has a throughput limitation., i.e. only so much data can be passed through it at a given time. Thus the SCSI can be viewed as a pipe between storage devices which has a limiting maximum flow rate.
A typical interactive TV system 1, as conventionally envisioned, is shown in schematic block diagram form in FIG. 1. The system 1 consists of one or more computer servers 2 each connected to a storage device 3. The assets stored on the storage device 3 are then distributed to the end user television sets 4 via a cable distribution system. Thus you have a number of computer servers controlling access to movies or news or shopping or other applications. The movie or news files are stored on the hard disk storage devices 3. Today, we can take a tape file from a Wide Area Network (WAN) or Local Area Network (LAN) 5 and store it on the storage device 3 through the servers 2.
A conventional asset management system takes this asset, for example, a movie file consisting of audio and video, and places it on the head end or hub server storage device so that the end user can access it. The operator of the system manually controls, through the server, where and when the asset is utilized by the end user. It is very one movie specific, i.e., one movie at a time.
When a popular asset is launched to the system, many end users will attempt to access the asset at the same time. The management system may easily get bogged down and fail to provide the asset to the end users on demand. Further, there is no way with current systems to predict in real time when peak usage should occur and anticipate these problems and surges so that the system can compensate for such surges as a matter of course.
There is currently no asset management system which permits multiple person access, tracks user access, predicts user access based on past and real time user history, tracks and manages asset distribution, tracks and manages asset storage, tracks and manages storage availability, tracks and manages scheduling of asset distribution in accordance with predetermined criteria such as licensing constraints and marketing limitations. Further, there currently is no system available which manages and controls globally all digital assets such as video, audio, multimedia, Internet services, and downloadable computer application assets.